northen
heroes
This piece originally
featured in Arena magazine.
| NORTHERN HEROES- I GUESS I JUST
WAS MADE FOR THESE TIMES
Quite a few of us got caught. Caught in the process of doing what the modern pop journalist is paid to do in1998. Caught out in fact- looking for the voice of that forever italicized zeitgeist. The Verve's Richard Ashcroft was such a gift- seeming to be eternally miserable and hence significant in some way happy people can never be. So we pinned all kinds of societal anxieties and pre-millenial concerns on what are, on closer and more considered inspection, a personal and reasonably straightforward set of songs. But we weren't going to let him get away with being ordinary. A voice was required and we were running out of options. Thom Yorke seemed to buckle under the weight and besides he was too posh, too fragile, too southern. Damon Albarn, it was clear, was an art college faker- always a trainer brand behind even the most uncool fresher- who wore beads around his neck, for God's sake. Liam looked the part alright but having previously declared himself, 'one exicted young man', he had clearly expressed so little interest in the the job of late that he'd virtually sacked himself. With a bruised and beaten lyric that seemed to lend itself well to ideas of universiality- "I'm a million different people from one day to the next"- the pomp-hop Bittersweet Symphony signalled a formal application for the job. So we helped Richard Ashcroft make a very swift transition from the doomed coulda-been Mad Richard- a fucked up drinking spar of the Gallaghers who, we'd love to have believed, freebased arsenic for breakfast- to a instant hero willing to bestow his wisdom on the great unwashed in a manner not seen since some bloke in sandals started putting Middle Eastern off licences out of business a few thousand years ago by changing the local water into wine. Richard Ashcroft gave us what Thom Yorke and Damon could never provide. For a start he looked like a hero- Simian pimp roll intact, attitude in spades and northern too- just like Liam and Ian Brown. Ashcroft was also working class and since the fairly meaningless words to John Lennon's vitriolic Imagine b-side have forever linked the words 'Working Class' with the word 'Hero' in the pop lexion, the posh kids were never in with a chance when it came to selecting an end of the century pop hero, a star to lead us somewhere, anywhere. You can legitimately ask the question why we needed to go overboard- I mean, it's not as if sports journalists are going around desperately seeking an End Of The Century Cricketer who expresses a kind of pre-millenial tension on the crease. Heroes have an unparalled currency in pop. Perhaps it's something to do with the simple fact that magazines have front covers. The fact is we all dived in head first and, reviewing The Verve's Urban Hymns in Mojo magazine, I spewed superlatives in much the same way as other writers who really should have known better or at least calmed down a bit. But none approached the task of sanctifying Mad Richard with the enthusiasm of NME editor Steve Sutherland. This virtual sermon which took the form of a live review of a recent show, has you admiring his wreckless bravery- as you would a man who rides a Penny Farthing around the M25 at peak hour. You have to understand that such a review is akin to a party policy document for a hero-fixated generation brought up on the weekly music press. As Liam disappears into his oversized Kagoul and Ian Brown changes the subject with talk of cosmic gardening while blaming fellow Stone Rose John Squire for everything from BSE to the National Debt, Sutherland names the man while the rest of us wonder whether Thom Yorke couldn't just be sent for elocution lessons in Wythenshawe. " We too are Richard, eyes closed, heads thrown back, throat muscles taut with the sweet pain of singing......Richard is using what happened to The Verve (my note: they broke up then got back together again) as a metaphor for our whole generation. Lost without any idea what to believe in, he offers us the best he can, the shared experience that we are all fucked up and it's OK". Sutherland's review, all joking aside at the back, does however raise some interesting general questions about the English pop hero. The idea persists that they are like us because they used to be like us, because they look and sound like us. It's also interesting that these heroes are seen as significant because we're said to see ourselves in them when really, after you've stripped away the casual clothes and the 'ee-y'ar' tones, these heroes are heroes because they are fundamentally different to us in that they don't lead normal lives, do dishes, buy lottery tickets, get buses. Moreover, we are reading bigger things into personal songs written for and about people we will never meet. The high fever hyperbole of such writing really just underlines the fact that pop hero worship is essentially an expression of an logic-defying need to dream which seems to alleviate the fundamental drudgery of many ordinary young lives. Richard Ashcroft is living proof that the drugs do work if the drugs are a kind of generational star-seeking Prozac- the need for which which can be traced back to the belief in original white trash icons like Lennon and even Sinatra. An intelligent force like Lennon was never going to be comfortable with the image that had settled around him. Working Class Hero is not an expression of the idea it is often idly mistaken for, but a bitter dig at those who need to look up to others. Songs like Glass Onion, which mocks the seriousness with which fans would study the often Goonishly meaningless pronouncements The Beatles routinely made, together with The Ballad Of John And Yoko, seem to make no bones about rejecting the heroic status that Lennon would frequently and schizophrenically encourage and enjoy. These songs also draw attention to a problem that Lennon seemed fixated on. The end result was he drew such attention to himself that, by the time of his legend-assuring death, he towered above all others. During the time Lennon had been in hiding, seeming to attempt to redefine his long lost ordinariness by baking bread and changing nappies, punk, a time when the worship of those on stages seemed the very antithesis of the anarchic idea, shaped a new way of looking at those who made things for us to listen to. At least it seemed that way. We spent time kidding ouselves with the fake concept of the anti-hero when in fact John Lydon and Joe Strummer were heroes as traditional as Lennon himself. Only The Fall's Mark E Smith emerged from punk and managed to maintain a strict anti-heroic status by becoming stark raving mad. What killed punk wasn't just familiarity and the way a cultural revolution was absorbed into the industry until it became just another marketing strategy, but our endlessly unsated demand for people to look up to. Lennon seemed a kind of lone defintion of working class idolatry until Ian Brown, then Liam and recently Richard Ashcroft have forced us to consider a number of common factors which express a specifically Northern take on the idea. Brian Wilson, Marvin Gaye, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, James Brown, Syd Barrett, Nick Drake and Iggy Pop would not exactly make great drinking buddies but they fit together in that their heroic status rest largely on firm foundations of undisputed musical genius. A Northern hero, however, doesn't have to be a genius. In fact, apart from Lennon, The La's AWOL Lee Mavers (tell me 'There She Goes' alone doesn't make him a contender and I'll tell you your ears need boarding up) and the soon to be crowned Michael Head (the recent Introducing The Strands LP is a real fingers-of-one-hand classic), famous north-of-Knutsford white males really don't need to concern themselves with staying up all night trying to better In My Life. To become a true Northern hero; a real ticket tout's icon, you must forget all the previously defining things you have read about having to wear women's clothes, play the sitar, write poetry, commit suicide, play piano in an indoor sandpit or roll about in broken glass. To fit the bill and achieve true heroic status you must follow these guidelines. 1. Perfect that curious Arndale pimp roll which requires you to walk in psychotic circles with your hands behind your back. A tambourine, on which you must achieve a Bez-like level of proficiency, is optional. 2. You must be the singer- Noel isn't a hero even though he makes more ridiculous death-or-glory statements than Liam and writes all those anthemic and definingly heroic songs because he's just the guitar player and hence posesses a talent that the car thief in the street would have to stay in to master. The same principle favours Ian Brown over Seahorses fret-wanker John Squire and John-Play-in-A-Day-Lennon over the self-conciously musical Paul McCartney. Chord swots, even ones who happened to be in The Stone Roses or The Beatles are decidedly unheroic. 3. You must take, or have taken, drugs like they are going out of fashion and talk about the same, even in denial, at the numerous available opportunities. 4. A hero must have access to lyrics which can be freely misinterpreted in order to strengthen their standing. Good examples of this are Lennon's Working Class Hero, The Stone Roses I Am The Resurrection, Oasis's Right Here Right Now and The Verve's Lucky Man- all which hint at at a status not of, but above the people, despite the grounding effect of regulation man-on-the-street attire. 5. A hero must be attractive to women. Not like say, Marc Bolan was, but in a bluff, matter of fact bird-conquering nonchalant fashion which allows the terrace dwelling hetrosexual worshipper to wink an envious 'good on ya, mate, give her one for me'. 6. Despite the above a hero must have a heroine called a girlfriend. Referring to same with anything other than awe-struck wonder can result in threats of personal violence. 7. A hero must talk bollocks of a standard to shame nonesenical verbal gymnast Stanley Unwin. Mad For It. Avin' It. Top One. Do One. Goo Goo Ga Joob- are useful meaningless phrases which can be slotted liberally into interviews. 8. Wear Sunglasses, even in bed. 9. Either wear your money on your back by investing in 300 pound suede shoes identical to the ones you can get in Timpsons for thirty quid (overpriced yellow waterproofs that make you sweat under the spotlight are also essential), or give it away in the most public way possible. The latter allows you to talk wisely about poverteh and the hardship endured during a childhood spent in a two-up-two-down shoebox in the middle of the road you were forced to call home. 9 a. Always stress working class credentials even though you wanted for nothing as a child and in fact lived in quite a desirable area. 10. Go mad and disappear whenever you feel like it. Come back claiming to have sorted it all out while baking bread or gardening or living in a tent. 11. Deep sea dive in your own pre-eminence and importance at all times. Be ungrateful to everyone except the mythical, 'people what put us up there'. 12. Claim to be Mad For It at all times, even when you'd rather be at home with, perish the image destroying thought, a good book. 12 a. Coom On! John McCready
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